Saturday, February 26, 2011

Sceptical of success expected of Baba Ramdev

There is some excitement about Baba Ramdev's Bharat Swabhiman movement. It is easy to understand this and was articulated recently in this post at Centre Right India. However I am sceptical of this.

One of the reasons for this scepticism, double dip cynicism due to probable failure of Baba Ramdev's movement has been written about by Gaurav again at Centre Right India. Such a failure will be a severe setback and will further disappoint middle India driving it further away from participating in the policial process.

But there are other reasons as well. The Congress party can never be underestimated. It is the oldest political party in India and has seen many ups and down, has gone through many political turmoils and yet has managed to retain it's massive footprint on electoral politics. It may be tempting to dismiss Digvijay Singh's charges against Baba Ramdev's movement. But we must not forget the Congress party knows it's politics in and out. Better than any other party in India.

It senses the futility in taking on Baba Ramdev on his turf. So it may have deployed Digvijay Singh in laying a trap for Baba Ramdev in drawing him into something it is most adept at. Politics and dirty tricks. It may be trying to bury the Baba under an avalanche of controversial charges. If it works, Baba will be left expending most of his energy in fighting these charges just to come out clean, just to retain his credibility among people. If that does not work, Congress will draw him into the world of politics where it fancies will be easy to defeat him. And it will. Like I said, no one knows politics better than the Congress party. The Baba seems to be dangerously unarmed here.

Baba Ramdev is the ace in the Bharat Swabhiman movement. There are risks in exposing your aces in such a high stakes games against such players as the Congress party. A possible defeat will be detrimental to opposing forces, middle India's psyche.